Rafael Nadal after Dominic Thiem loss: “I hope to play my best tennis in Roland Garros”

Rafael Nadal said he intends to have a free weekend before ramping up his preparations for Roland Garros from Monday.

Tomorrow I’ll be in Mallorca fishing or playing golf, or another thing. I’m going to rest a little bit, I think I deserve it. Then from Monday and Tuesday I will start to prepare for Roland Garros. It’s an important event for me. If you do things well, you have more chances in Roland Garros. I hope to play my best tennis in Roland Garros.

I didn’t play very well. I want to congratulate him because he was better than me this afternoon. Great, in all aspects. He played long, he played very aggressive, hitting the ball very strong with high intensity. In general I was not able to push him back. He got a lot of points, maximum, more times than me. And that’s the key of this game. It’s obvious I didn’t play my best match.

I’ve been playing a lot. It’s difficult, every day. Madrid then Rome back-to-back, after Barcelona. It’s not easy playing every day for the last four weeks.

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Maybe I’m just lucky, but I find many positive articles about Rafa.
[excerpts from an article by Ahmed Rizvi, 5/14/17]

“Coming to Paris, Nadal is the hottest player on the men’s tour, his performance in this week’s Rome Masters notwithstanding. The only slight concern is his workload.

He is in sizzling form as well winning thre back-to-back titles on clay…to climb to the top of the ATP’s Race to London rankings.

The Nadal of 2017 knows he owns these courts and that is essentially the difference between him and the plebeian of 2015 and 2016, who lost seven consecutive matches to Djokovic, was beaten by Thiem on the clay courts of Buenos Aires [2016] and who lost to Fognini three times in 2015.

Last week he beat all three of them in Madrid, along with Nick Kyrgios and David Goffin. And each of those wins must be worth their weight in gold in terms of confidence.

Lest we forget, Nadal also reached the final of the AO, Acapulco and Miami.”

The stats for every match are a bit more complicated. I have some files and folders of my own but basically you need to check the stats for each match and compile them by yourself. I often take screenshots of the stats shown on TV/gadgets and combined with the stats updated on ATP and sofascore sites.

@Rainier [don’t know if this response will go where it belongs…hence @Rainier]

In your response to Annie Nadal, you disagreed with her “U will lose more than U win.” So I was asking if you had the stats to support your rebuttal; tournaments won vs tournaments lost is what I should have asked, not matches. Matches won would surely outnumber matches lost, it’s only logical. My error.
So how many tournaments did he win vs lost? Or is your rebuttal based on something else. Thanks

“That mantle of favorite will be UNCHANGED despite his [Nadal’s] defeat Friday at the hands of an opponent [Thiem] who had learned from recent experience. Thiem lost to Nadal in straight sets in the finals in both Barcelona and Madrid.” [The New York Times, Ben Rothenberg]

Details of the Agassi-Djokovic partnership are emerging. According to the Guardian, “Andre Agassi will be in Novak Djokovic’s box when he begins his defense of his French Open title next week — at least for a few matches.”

“Djokovic later said, ‘I spoke to Andre the last couple of weeks on the phone, and we decided to get together in Paris. We don’t have any long-term commitment, it’s just us trying to get to know each other a little bit. He will not stay the whole tournament. He’s going to stay only to a certain time, and then we’ll see after what happens after that what’s going to happen.'”

“The odds are Agassi, who values his home life, will stay briefly. It is almost certain he will not last as long as Boris Becker.”

Rafa, Nole wants to keep his FO title and others are looking to take it from him. Let that someone be YOU….

“Alexander Zverev refused to back himself to add a maiden Grand Slam to his first Masters crown on Sunday, insisting Rafael Nadal remained the man to beat at the French Open.

Zverev, 20, stunned World No. 2, Novak Djokovic 6-4, 6-3, in the Rome Masters final to put himself firmly in the frame as a potential champion at Roland Garros when the second major of the year starts in Paris next Sunday.”

“‘No, the favourite is still definitely Rafael Nadal,’ said German star Zverev.” “‘And the others, the rest, it’s going to be quite open. I think Novak is playing quite great again. Dominic [Thiem] has been showing he’s been playing very, very well.

I just won here. So I’ve got to put me on that list, even though, you know, I don’t want to sound like I want to say that I’m the favourite myself or something like this.'”

“This year he [Zverev] will go to the tournament as the new world number 10.”
[SuperSport, May 21, 20:41]

on partime basis. Me too i wish nadal would have hired agassi but understand why he hired moya. Look nadal is a spanish player who feels very comfortable surrounding himself with spanish speaking people. The difference between him and federer and djokovic is that the swiss and the serb speak english better and nadal expresses himself better in english so i think that is why he didnt hire agassi. But you have to admire djokovic because unless nadal who waited two years before the made changes djokovic only needed 5 months to make drastic changes and hire another coach